An Email Can Make a Difference

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February 12, 2013

There are times when we each may feel that a phone call or email to our elected officials will be done in vein. Typically we will receive a form email or form letter stating why that official disagrees with us. But on some rare occasions we send an email and something remarkable occurs. One of our activists forwarded her email exchange with Representative Mario Scavello to us. Take a look:

February 7, 2013
Dear (Representative) Mario M. Scavello,

I am writing to respectfully request that you reject the Obamacare Medicaid expansion for Pennsylvania by supporting House Bill 269.

The most important issue in the Medicaid expansion is the human cost. If Pennsylvania were to expand Medicaid, it would railroad hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians into a low-quality, government-managed health insurance system with limited medical options.

As the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy explains, “Studies consistently show that patients on Medicaid have the worst health outcomes of any group in America– far worse than those with private insurance and, in some cases, worse than those with no insurance at all.” Now it is up to Pennsylvania to decide whether it will expand this broken, costly program. Given the difficult budget choices the state has already had to make in recent years to balance its books, as required by law, the answer is very simple: Pennsylvania should join the growing list of states choosing not to expand. To embrace expansion would crowd out vital funding to our schools and universities, to rebuilding our roads and bridges, and to those social welfare programs to which our state is already committed.

Also, if we expand Medicaid, things will get worse: as federal Medicaid goes deeper into red ink, the federal government will likely reduce its support, leaving Pennsylvania patients on the hook to pay ever-increasing hospital bed taxes.